Hank Paulson on journalists’ role in the crash

“THOSE people who know me well know I’m pretty direct,” Hank Paulson told a room full of journalists in New York on March 1st, as he analysed the performance of news organisations during the economic crisis. The former treasury secretary, addressing a meeting of the Committee of Concerned Journalists (your columnist was on the discussion panel), was certainly direct in highlighting several examples of failures by the media, though he also handed out plenty of praise for, as he put it, professionals doing a tough job in difficult circumstances.

The first failure, he said, was a tendency to run inaccurate or half-baked stories because of the pressure to deliver scoops. One example of these “premature stories with unexpected consequences” was a report in December 2008 that the government was planning to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide low-cost mortgages to reduce foreclosures. According to Mr Paulson, this misrepresented as policy an idea that was still being considered as one option among many and was quickly rejected. “I can think of no industry more competitive than the press,” he said—and as a former investment banker he should recognise competition when he sees it. …